Release of “Linda McCartney’s Polaroid Diaries”

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From Taschen.com:

Following her best-selling TASCHEN monograph, Linda McCartney’s Polaroid Diaries brings together highlights from her vast archive. Taken from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, the portraits, still lifes, landscapes and interior compositions affirm her bold eye for pattern, color, or simply an elegant fall of light. Through these candid instant pictures, we discover an intimate testimony to McCartney as an experimental artist and photographer.

Also available in a signed Collector’s Edition and in two limited Art Editions, each with a print signed by Paul McCartney

From paulmccartney.com, September 24, 2019:

Following her best-selling TASCHEN monograph Life in Photographs , discover a more intimate and highly personal side of Linda’s photographic work in The Polaroid Diaries . Interspersed portraits, still lifes, and interior compositions affirm Linda’s bold eye for pattern, texture, colour, and an elegant use of light. The collection focuses on her distinctive way of seeing the world through charming and quirky portraits of Paul and the couple’s four children. We see them pulling faces and in matching pyjamas. We see James pouring water on himself, and Mary and Stella playing dress-up. There’s dancing, eating, horse riding, and countless moments of everyday life on their farm in Southern England. The images, seemingly random, are flawlessly composed, revealing a unique artistic sensibility.

As Paul says in the introduction:

“She would just see things. Many of her photos, it’s just that one click. You’ve got to recognise when a great photo is happening in front of you. And then you’ve got to snap it at exactly the right moment… And she did that so many times that it always impressed me.”

The Polaroid Diaries curates more than 200 of these “right” moments from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, along with a foreword by Chrissie Hynde and an essay by art critic Ekow Eshun. The book also features luminous landscapes across Scotland and Arizona, as well as the odd celebrity, as the likes of Steve McQueen and Adam Ant wander into the frame. Other pictures attest to her love of animals, with compassionate images of cats, lambs, horses, and hens. It’s a pre-Instagram glimpse into the life of an extraordinary family, a celebration of Linda’s legacy as a fiercely committed artist and of the instant magic of Polaroid film. Also available in a Collector’s Edition and in two limited Art Editions, each with a numbered print and signed by Paul.

I always used to say to Linda, ‘When are we going to look at these? We’ve got millions of them.’

We kept saying, ‘Oh we’ll just take one day a year when we look through all our photos.’ Linda got a Polaroid camera shortly after we met. In the early days, it was a great fun thing for anyone to have one, just because of the magic of watching it develop. But being a photographer, she did more with it than most people would, she was very intrigued by the whole thing.

Paul McCartney – excerpt from a FT article

From the minute I met her and she took pictures, I just knew that I could trust her and that whatever she took I’d be comfortable with. So you didn’t do anything, you didn’t really pose. I mean I was doing my teeth and the spittle was falling out, I just sort of turned around and she took the picture.

Paul McCartney, from Facebook

Last updated on February 17, 2024